California
by Stephane Richer
Summary: Listen as we go, nothing's gonna stop me now


California

Disclaimer: I don't own Tite Kubo's _Bleach_ or Phantom Planet's "California".

* * *

It's easy to settle in as exiles. They create identities, fool the government, and it would all be a fun game if it weren't so trying sometimes. Even though they speak the language and eat the same food and wear the same clothes, this is like a foreign country. Everything works in a different way than they're all used to.

The vizards have gone off to do their own thing, and it's probably for the best. Their presence is a painful reminder to Kisuke and Tessai of their own failings. Kisuke, Tessai, and Yoruichi are reminders to the vizards of what they will never be again.

Not that any one of them is still a proper shinigami. They're inside artificial bodies, changed forms that stay the same as the world around them moves forward. They're still living on Seireitei time and that's the one thing they will not give up and adapt do.

Quite simply, they won't give up the fight. Aizen isn't gone, and no matter where their souls end up he could end up being a threat to them all and to the world (worlds?) as they know it. It's better if they remain here, retain their memories (although, if one of them dies in a gigai will they go back to soul society? Yoruichi doesn't really want to find out firsthand) and prepare to fight.

After all, Yoruichi can keep abreast of what's up back home (everyone has conveniently forgotten her cat form, not to mention she is the only one who hasn't been arrested and the only people who would figure out that she's followed Kisuke and Tessai will not be looking too hard for her). Her connections with the Shiba house come in very useful. The rogue noble family that they're always threatening to kick out will always know what's going on, and Kuukaku has a knack for steering clear of deep trouble.

Still, there are always a million false leads, some of which have surely been planted by Aizen himself. Some things become clearer as others become more obscured, and there are too many questions for them all to handle.

Conversations with passing shinigami can help, but they always run the risk of someone who knows them (or knows of them) figuring out who they are. But the candy shop (and shinigami aid center) is a decent enough cover. No one associates the perverted man in the hat, his hulking sidekick, and their small black cat with the three exiled shinigami. Time passes, and the three gradually fade from soul society's collective consciousness.

Yoruichi (finally in human form again) leans back against the porch. The human wars are troubling, but Karakura has remained relatively safe from bombings. Still, she sees men in military fatigues. Starving children. No one has the time or the money to come and buy candy, but there are so many restless souls that the influx of shinigami has made up for the loss of profit. Hollows run rampant, being created faster than the shinigami can handle alone. The vizards and Kisuke help, under cover of darkness. So do the remaining few quincy, who have made their peace with the other spiritually-aware inhabitants of the town. Still, the destruction has driven Aizen out of their immediate concerns. Even now, with a lull that Yoruichi knows is only temporary (maybe it will last a day or two but no more than that) she is too exhausted to think. She sips her tea. Tessai's tea is always the same, has always been the same since they were young and he first learned, served them all proudly. Even though the leaves are from a different world they manage to taste the same somehow. It's bittersweet and comforting. She can feel Tessai's and Kisuke's reiatsu, as Kisuke moves forward and toward her while Tessai remains in the kitchen.

Kisuke reaches her and wraps an arm around her, and gratefully she sinks into his familiar arms. Even now, when they cannot think about the larger picture they can think about one another. They keep drifting back and forth on the border between best friends and lovers, and right now they're just touching the latter barely as they touch one another with more intimacy than usual because there's more urgency than usual and they both need a release so badly. She wants to cry in his arms but she's shed so many tears, so much blood and sweat, that she just can't cry any more and her body shakes violently in silent sobs.

He'll hold her as long as she needs him to.

A hollow shrieks in the distance, and Yoruichi stiffens and sits up. She feels the reiatsu of an unfamiliar shinigami clash against the hollow, and whoever this is has the situation under control. But there will be more, countless more, the souls of those killed in the war slowly drifting home to haunt their elementary schools and childhood homes and hospitals and wives and children and mothers and fathers and the streets they used to know but are now broken in the late afternoon sunlight through the glass of a broken window reflected off a puddle on the neglected sidewalks.

She feels a stirring. This time it's not a hollow, but soon it will be. The shinigami are nowhere near unless they're hiding their reiatsu, which none of them have any reason to. Quickly, she is a cat again and races off, a black blur. Kisuke stretches out. He knows she'll be back eventually. Sometiems she takes an hour, sometimes a day, sometimes a month.

They all need some time on their own every once in a while. After all, when only two others understand your situation things can heat up quickly. Even the whole town constricts them so that they're barely breathing sometimes and they have to get out. But there's no place to go, just smoking landscapes and desolate souls everywhere.

And this time she keeps running. It's an easy tap to send the soul on its way to the beyond and then she's off into the hills, and even within the limitations of this form her shunpo is better than anyone's. She's not sure when she'll stop, or even if she'll ever stop. Does this land even end? She's lived here for more than thirty years; she should know but she doesn't. Eventually, somewhere, it has to.

It is twenty years before she returns home. Tessai is waving to two kids who have just bought giant lollipops and then he sees the black cat out of the corner of his eye and that's that. She's hugged and pampered and given food, and she catches up with the news and gives Tessai and Kisuke everything she has. She knows if they made a breakthrough in these twenty years, they would have found some way to contact her and she would have done the same with them. Of course, this reunion is not because she's made a breakthrough. She just needs to be home right now.


End file.
